New Year's Resolutions
Okay, time for new year resolutions, which means we need to have a plan for the next twelve months.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter which way I look, I can no longer produce any kind of new year resolution. I have no idea what to do for the future. In effect, the future is just a continuation of the mess we are all in. That’s pretty dispiriting.
Let me instead suggest for myself what I would like to resolve.
I want to write more books, and promote them, and up my sales. Unfortunately, in order to do that I need to go back to school, and learn how to use AI.
If I look back at the past forty odd years I seem to have spent a large part of my life learning new technologies. I’m stuffed with all kinds of knowledge from how to write HTML, to understanding how computers work, how to use social media for advertising, and all the side issues that one gets bogged down with, such as programming using various programming languages, creating apps, and using various essential algorythmns to make sure things work the way one wants them to work.
Unfortunately, I do wonder whether it is worth learning to use various AIs because maybe in five years time they will be a lot cleverer than me, and (this is where it counts) they will eventually put me out of work.
A couple of years ago I wrote a book about all this stuff, and it seemed that roughly every three months I ended up writing another chapter, and adjusting the previous chapters, until it got to the point where I simply couldn’t keep up with the technological advances, and I gave up on the idea of ever publishing the book because by the time I’d started making a profit, the damn thing would be obsolete.
Things have now gotten worse. I feel we are close to a situation where it is becoming pointless learning to do, use, and make profitable anything at all because AIs are going to be able to do those things quicker and better than I can ever hope to do, and so why would I bother?
It gets even worse. What am I going to do with the rest of my life? Anything? Nothing? Just potter about, eat, drink and be merry, and sod everything else?
The real question these days is: are human beings about to be sidelined in so many ways so what, going forward, is the purpose in life?
AI can make my car obsolete. I just dial up one from Waymo, and send it back when I’ve finished with it. How long before it can mend itself? Airplanes and trains can run themselves. There is even a farm that operates without humans. Implants can monitor our health and suggest medication. Office work has been largely automated for the past thirty years. In fact we are within a decade of 90% of workers being made obsolete. Even if it takes a little longer, a generation at most, the vast majority of us will have been upstaged by technology.
The question as to my goals for the next twelve months is really more about what the heck do I do for the rest of my life because I can see myself slowly (or is that quickly?) being made redundant?
Even if it takes more than a generation before the effects of handing everything over to AI starts to seriously upset the current patterns of life, the writing is on the wall. Human beings are being made redundant. So how do we justify ourselves going forward?
A new year’s resolution? You’re joking! The new year is going to be the old year. We’re going to start going backwards.
Welcome to 2024!